Verismo in Happyland

There were some things I already knew about Jim Libiran’s film “Happyland”. I attended the Adobo magazine sponsored preview a few days ago of the film in Greenbelt 3. It was about ‘futkaleros” — barefoot boys being taught to play football in Tondo. I sought the interview with him when the Azkals zoomed into prominence to make football a national sport.

Jim says he was already making the film “Happyland” two years ago when football was still known only to a few Filipino sports aficionados in rich enclaves of Makati and Alabang. It was a happy coincidence that just as he was finishing the film, the Azkals beat defending champion Vietnam.

It is the story of how a Spanish priest of Don Bosco, Father John, probably missing his childhood in Barcelona, and football coach Peter Amores began teaching football to barefoot street boys of Tondo. When I met Jim he said he was on the last stage of making the film and running short of funds. He wanted the most up to date cameras that would zoom in on the images of Tondo in his mind where he once lived. He got the funds - P12 million - by scraping the barrel. And so we have the film. Awesome.

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Libiran is known for using real people vs. film stars in his films to achieve social realism. Do you mean reality film like reality tourism? I asked. In film, he said, it is called verismo, Italian word vero, for what is true.

Libiran composes his story from materials gathered by his cameras rather than a preconceived plot to be interpreted by film shots. The two approaches give results that are remarkably different.

To me there were two stories running parallel to each other in the film — one is the story of the futkaleros and the other is the story of Tondo. The two stories then intermingle to make a coherent narrative.

His earlier reality film was Tribu that won at Cinemalaya for Best Film and at the Paris Cinema Festival for Le Pari de L’Avenir (The Youth Jury Prize).  The film about Tondo gangster life was distributed locally and internationally.

While the focus of the film was on the story of the Futkaleros and how they cope with a new challenge in their lives, the background story of life in Tondo was happening all the time — stories about a cruel father, a nagging mother, the dirt and filth of garbage dumps that became their playgrounds and scenes of their unhappiness.

Well, probably being older, it was this story, the story of the poor in Tondo that cut deep. I felt sad and embarrassed at seeing such images of poverty I had only written about but never actually saw.

I was like the boys from a private school who were reluctant to leave their bus because “they might beat us.” The physical contact had to be made to realize that the poor of Tondo were as human as they were. The film Happyland put me in contact with Tondo’s reality.

Happyland is not just for the young but also for the old who need to have a different perspective of this god-forsaken place in the center of Manila.

I would carry it further. It reminded me of a district in San Francisco, that ordinary San Franciscans refer to as the home of drug addicts and thieves -  Upper Tenderloin. It is sandwiched between downtown San Francisco and its rich suburbs. It was avoided by the genteel until some civic minded citizens thought of turning it upside down and made into a tourist attraction.

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Having seen “Happyland” maybe I thought just maybe we could do something for Tondo that the people of San Francisco did for Tenderloin with its abandoned buildings that people would not walk into at night.

There is indeed something about it that is different from Golden Gate bridge or its cable cars that could be attractive to tourists. When I visited the city recently, the mayor was talking of putting up plaques on the historical buildings. Why not “turn the grit of the Uptown Tenderloin district into an attraction, pointing out its ties to music (the Grateful Dead recorded there) and its “rich vice history” (alas, the gambling dens and speakeasies are gone).”

Some of the decrepit buildings are one room resident hotels where many early Filipino migrants to the US — the manongs — lived and died with their failed dreams.

Libiran said in one interview that Tondo is historically significant and should be made a tourism stop. Who knows? Maybe Happyland will do more than just teach the young about football.

Angel Guerrero of Adobo quoted what Bill Shankley thought about football:” Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.” It certainly changed the lives and attitudes of the young boys.

Shankley is right if indeed the film Happyland would provoke tourism authorities to think of Tondo with its many possibilities — it could be made into a must historical tour with historians and people like Libiran working together to recover Tondo’s glory days and put a positive spin to its grittiness that could not be found anywhere else in Manila the way San Francisco did for Tenderloin.  

The San Franciscans listed all the historic places in the district to commemorate these with plaques and gather artifacts to show it was once a great place to live in. We could do the same with Tondo.

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If you are a diabetic or on a diet and forbidden to eat sugar, here is good news. A group of Filipinos have now come up with a natural sugar substitute they called Suchero.

Joey Villa, who is a member of the group that developed the product says “Among all natural alternative sweeteners, Suchero is a low GI food with a unique caramel taste, full-bodied, that can be used 1:1 substitute with cane sugar. Moreover, it has no bitter after taste and can be used just like sugar for hot and cold drinks, for baking, and for cooking too, but with no harmful effects.  

The product has a huge potential in the world markets, Villa added, but consumers need to know about it. So they are losing no time to get it exported. Being 100 percent natural, Suchero has no additives, no artificial flavoring, no coloring, no preservatives and no chemicals.